Critic Reviews

City-dwellers may go their entire lives without realizing that the greatest movie screen of all is above their heads, telling billions of stories.

Affording viewers a trip to the Chilean desert to gaze up at the crystal-clear sky, Cielo is a rapturous act of cinematic contemplation.

A serene, existential experience from the Canadian filmmaker Alison McAlpine, who takes to Chile’s Atacama Desert to look both skyward and inward.

There’s a “Let it be” sense to McAlpine’s soft exhortations, which struck me as a little ironic, since her Cielo might have garnered more of the appreciation it deserves if she herself had quieted and simply let it, the sky, be, in all the reverent glory she with the silent poetry of her camera was already showing us.

Alison McAlpine's documentary lacks urgency beyond its persistent pondering of the sky's eternal mysteries.

A curious film in multiple ways, Cielo does not always achieve its lofty ambitions of transcendence. However, accompanied by the eerie silence of the desert and the plaintive wail of Philippe Lauzier’s mournful score, McAlpine’s visuals transport the viewer to a state of reflection while reminding us of the sublime beauty of the space above.

Ms. McAlpine’s purple musings in voice-over (“the stars tell me to go on a journey in this desert”), and the decision not to identify subjects formally until the closing credits, give the film an unnecessary fuzziness.

While these individual images are indeed powerful, the surrounding film lacks thematic depth and narrative substance, rendering it inert and rather forgettable.